Bologna –
Finishing the first training session of the year, captain Marco Belinelli met with reporters to takea review of the start of the new season: “I’m happy to be here and start again with a new team. We are starting right away all together or almost together, and that can be important. It will take some time anyway, we have 5-6 new players, but we have a lot of desire to do well.”
On Will Clyburn’s arrival and the 24/25 EL season, which will see Virtus Segafredo make its debut on Oct. 4 against Efes: “I am very happy with his acquisition. We all know him, he won the Euroleague and has been the best for years in that position. He is coming from a complicated year, so he has a lot of motivation to do well with the Virtus jersey, I am happy to be his teammate. There are at least 6 level teams–even financially–very strong, on paper. But it doesn’t mean anything, and we proved it last year, in the first part of the season. And even after that I think it was not a physical decline, last year in February we paid a lot for the simultaneous absence of Hackett and Cordinier, two quintet players, failing to win those 2-3 games that would have allowed us to play for 6th-7th place. The key will be the physical part, getting to be well in the January-February-March period. On paper we want to do better than last year, although until December and early January it was an illegal Euroleague, we had never felt such heat except when I was 16-17 years old and training with Ginobili, not even in the years with Milos. We want to restart from that and do better than last year, but we start with our feet on the ground, having many new players and rookies in the Euroleague. We are not afraid, it’s going to be a tough Euroleague because all the teams are very strong, all the games both home and away are complicated, but we have a lot of desire to do well.”
